Video Directors to Watch

In FADER's annual Now Issue, we get up close and personal with the artists setting the tone for the next year. We looked at record labels, models, authors,producers and many more. Here are four video directors to watch in 2014.

Age: 26
Location: New York, NY
Key videos: The hedonistic visuals for Le1f’s “Spa Day,” flush with twerk team understudies and pint-sized doobies; a music web series for VFiles called Out Hear, in which a featured artist shares a hobby or rare skill
Crucial moment: Mykki Blanco holding court with some Harlem middle school girls in Miller-Gordon’s intimate, 2012 web documentary, Mykki Blanco: Cosmic AngelPhilosophy: “I want to make things that you can come back to and get psyched on in collaboration with strong personalities.”

Location: Hollywood, CA
Key videos: The incest-themed, unsettlingly alluring treatment for Slava’s “Girl Like Me,”
and the James Bond-inspired video for Julia Holter’s “This Is a True Heart”; a forthcoming ode to Brighton Beach for CSS “Into the Sun,” filtered with a “suspense/heist-thriller/double-cross vibe”
Crucial moment: The soap opera-parodying title sequence of his Feast of Burden series for MOCAtv
Philosophy: “When someone reveals a truth that makes you feel like, God, I’m so happy this exists, or makes someone else feel like, I hate this, it makes me sick.”

Age: 38
Location: London, UK
Key videos: The kente-colored, glitchy graphics for M.I.A.’s “Boyz” and the abstract, MIDI-reactive journey through a futuristic city for Machinedrum’s “eyesdontlie”; forthcoming live visuals for M.I.A. and a short fashion video for Cassette Playa & SHOWstudio
Crucial moment: The traveling businessman-themed montage in his video for Ford & Lopatin’s “Shadows in Bloom”
Philosophy: “It’s not like there’s a magic formula, and if there is, then everyone does it, so I then avoid it. Anything which isn’t the norm is fine by me.”

Age: 33
Location: New York, NY
Key videos: The clip for The National’s “Sea of Love,” which captures the band being fronted by a young air-guitar virtuoso in a single, uncut shot, and the video for Yeasayer’s “I Remember,” which underscores the grizzled magic of a troubled motorcycle rider with purple smoke and pensive-looking clay busts
Crucial moment: The National wielding a potato gun in “Graceless”
Philosophy: “No matter how many ‘good decisions’ you make as a director, there’s a huge part of every project that comes from this weird place that doesn’t run on logic.”